I've been looking into getting a VB recently, but I haven't justified spending the money on one yet.
I saw a few reasonably priced ones a few days ago on eBay, but I did not have any money in my Paypal.
I got to play one at my local retro games store.
I will say if you're looking to get into it -- the stand, while nice, is unnecessary. It had a terrible design, which caused the "medallions" that held the legs together to break, often. PlanetVB has a user (forget his name) that sells replacements, but many people have just chucked their stands altogether. Soooo if you can get a good deal on one without the stand, go for it! There's plenty of different ways to play -- people have modded desk lamp arms, people have head-mounted them, I used to lay back on my couch and just balance it on my face (that would hurt the bridge of my nose eventually, but bubble wrap helped that).
You also occasionally see them without the eye shades -- THAT is much more necessary because you need to block the light to play it effectively. Fortunately, those also seem to be much cheaper, $10 parts when people are parting out their broken systems rather than $50+ if you're lucky enough to find an original stand in good condition.
On the whole though, I like the system. It takes a lot of flack, but if you play it as it was designed, in short bursts with the auto-pause feature on (and you actually walk away from it when it pauses), it really is enjoyable and doesn't give you (well, me at least) a problem. My biggest issue is that I'll occasionally get that "just came out of a dark room into the light" sort of... not vertigo, but I don't have a better term for it. Some very fun and unique games, a fairly active homebrew/aftermarket community (there's at least 4-5 protos/homebrew/ports that I'm aware of, and with a 14 game catalog, I call that active!
), and (other than Jack Bros) reasonably priced for the US releases.
